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Symposium Focuses on Anti-Cancer Drugs Drawn From Nature
DETROIT --The next generation of cancer drugs is expected to come from nature. Now researchers from around the world are attending a symposium at Henry Ford Health System to discuss their most promising findings.
The fifth Anti-Cancer Drug Discovery and Development Symposium is being held from 7:30 a.m.- 5 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 23 and 7:30 a.m.- 5:45 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24 at Henry Ford Hospital's Buerki Auditorium in Detroit.
Attending the conference are: researchers freshly returned with exciting discoveries from Laos and Vietnam and the tropical rainforests of Suriname; researchers working in the lab to create the "pharmaceutics of the future"; and, a foremost clinical expert who delivers anti-cancer drugs to patients in the clinic.
"This route to the new anti-cancer drugs is very promising, but it requires painstaking research," said Fred Valeriote, head of Henry Ford Health System's drug discovery program. "By sharing our knowledge in this field, we hope to speed discoveries that will revolutionize cancer treatment."
Highlights of the conference include:
* "New Anti-cancer Drugs from Cultured and Collected Marine Organisms" --William Fenical, Ph.D., University of California at San Diego. The NCI-sponsored project, sponsored in collaboration with scientists at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company in Princeton, N.J., focuses on slow growing cancers which have been poorly treated to date. Fenical said soft corals, sponges, marine bacteria and fungi have all yielded compounds that look promising against cancer cells. (Dr. Fenical will be speaking at the conference at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23.)
* "Combining Anti-cancer Drug Discovery with Biodiversity Conservation: The Suriname Experience" --David Kingston, Ph.D., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The discovery of new and improved drugs from natural sources requires the screening of many thousands of extracts in order to find the very few that possess the high potency and selectivity needed for clinical development. "You've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince," writes Kingston. He and his colleagues' work in Suriname is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation and seeks to promote drug discovery while conserving both biodiversity and ethnobotanical knowledge. (Contact Dr. Kingston at 540-231-6570.)
* "Small Molecule Diversity and Cancer Therapeutics" --John Lazo, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh. Lazo said the explosive increase in new cancer molecular targets has stimulated great interest in finding new drug-like molecules. He and his colleagues have discovered several interesting and novel compounds that block enzymes and prevent cancer cells from dividing.
(Contact Dr. Lazo by calling Sharon at 412-648-9319.)
* "Empirical Screening/Rational Design: Quo Vadis?" --Edward D. Sausville, M.D., Ph.D., National Cancer Institute. A revolution is occurring in how cancer drugs are discovered. Since the middle of the century, cancer drugs were selected for future study based in large part on their ability to block cancer cell growth in animals or in a test tube. While a number of the currently used drugs, including cisplatin, doxorubicin and paclitaxel, were discovered this way, advances in science have given us new insights to understand the basis for cancer occurrence and spread, writes Sausville. Cancer discovery of the future will increasingly be directed to finding molecules that combine and affect important molecular targets for cancer cell growth, owing to "rational design" of a strategy focused on a particular target.
(Call Dr. Sausville by calling Emily at 301-496-8720.)
* "An International Collaborative Program to Study the Pharmaceutical Potential of Plants of Laos and Vietnam" --D. Dole Soejarto, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago. Soejarto and his colleagues are attempting to find new molecules effective against cancer culled from tropical rainforest plants of Vietnam and Laos. Goals also include discovering novel molecules for therapy against malaria, AIDS and diseases that affect the central nervous system, such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy and pain.
(Dr. Soejarto will be speaking at the conference at 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24.)
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